cation of their own emotions and intellections, good literary attainments, and taste subserve the same purpose as weapons do to the army, or ordnance to the navy. They are the instruments by which their power is felt and feared.

There is another influence of a rich, sound literature, when widely diffused and received, directly on the mass of the community. This cannot be easily over-estimated or over-stated. It awakens slumbering intellect. It arouses paralyzed moral energies. It educates, most efficiently and usefully educates, both the general mind and the general heart. When used by the gifted minds of a people, to inculcate important principles of government, to form a right public opinion, to give useful direction to public affairs, to construct a noble, national character, literature shows an immense power over the mental and moral elements of human society. Thus wielded, it holds an influence which no arm of war and no kingly authority are able to exert. The history of China records twenty-two dynasties, and more than two hundred and fifty kings, but five distinguished literary lights, like Confucius, would have done more for the people of the celestial empire, than all of them together. It was not the Magna Charta, ratified by king John, that stopped royal encroachment, broke royal oppression, and made British subjects so nobly free. That was the achievement of aroused British intellect, acting on the country in its own favourite forms, of persuasion and power. A literature, that breathed the spirit of the times, created for the occasion, called on the people to assert their rights, and to enjoy them, in defiance of the frown of the aristocracy or the will of the throne. The appeal was irresistible! It was not the celebrated declaration of the year seventy-six, nor any mere skill and bravery in arms, afterward, which made this country what it has become. What we were before; what we were, intellectually and morally, embodied and published abroad, originated the declaration, and achieved the triumph in the succeeding protracted struggle. It was in the field of intellect; it was on the arena of principle, that the grand contest occurred. It was then, that

new doctrines of government, of human right, of liberty of conscience, of religious obligation, in the imposing form of a revolutionary literature, won our victories, and secured our great privileges and honours. Not physical power, but a pure and noble literature, in the hands of superior minds, moulds

human character, and directs human affairs.

A sound and healthy literature has a more extended action still. It exerts an influence widely beyond the people and the time which gave it birth.

As literature is the intellectual and moral spirit of man, speaking, holding communication with its contemporaries, the whole influence of it depends on intellectual and moral sympathy; on the ultimate law, that heart acts on heart, and mind on mind, with great readiness and invariable certainty. The world having nothing isolated, the spirit of man being linked with the spirit of man intimately and universally, the mental and moral movement of an individual, according to the law referred to, communicates itself on every side; recipients become, in succession, conveyors of impulse, and thus the influence goes on endlessly. We have an illustration in point in the science of astronomy. When a number of masses of matter are well balanced around a great attracting centre, if there be introduced a new body, every other receives an impulse and a movement from its place, passes on in a new orbit, and in an altered velocity. So, when, in the system of minds, a new book, a new speech, a new truth, a new aspiration, a new mental or moral act, of any description, is introduced, there is an influence, a movement, a displacement, a new adjustment throughout a vast field of intellect. We have an illustration of this same thing, in that familiar law of nature, the equality of action and re-action. Each drop of water and each particle of air, when moved, moves equally each drop and particle around it. The same is true of more solid substances. In respect to all matter whatever, impulse that is received, is communicated to contiguous bodies. These last transmit the same to more masses, these to more still, in ever-widening succession. And phi

losophy does not allow us to believe the influence ceases, till we reach the confines of the material universe. It assures us, "that the momentary waves, raised by the passing breeze, apparently born but to die on the spot that saw their birth, leave behind them an endless progeny, which, reviving in other seas and visiting a thousand shores, will pursue their ceaseless course, till ocean itself be annihilated; that the track of every canoe, every vessel, remains for ever registered in the movement of all succeeding particles which may occupy its place the furrow made is, indeed, instantly filled up by the closing waters, but they draw after them other and laiger portions, and these larger portions still, in endless succession. So, likewise, philosophy teaches, that the pulsations of the air, set in motion by the human voice, communicate themselves to columns of atmosphere next beyond them, in succession, until the waves, thus raised, pass around the earth, and then around again, and thus the element we are breathing becomes a vast library, on whose pages are written all that man has spoken." Minds move more easily among themselves than particles of matter, far more readily receive and communicate successive impulses. Heart throbs to heart, thought wakes to thought, mind kindles to mind, with a quickness, a certainty and a power, as much superior to what occurs under the eye of the natural philosopher, as intelligent mind is nobler in its elements and capabilities, than dull, senseless matter. There shall come a message to our shores, that the descendants of the noble, classical Greeks, are making a last death-struggle against the oppressor, and scarcely will it be read, before a warm, contagious sympathy will begin to appear. Soon, in the large cities, public meetings will be held on the subject. Then the pulpit will catch the general feeling. The theatres and operas will give the heroic sufferers a benefit. The streets, and public houses, and markets, and parks, will take up the absorbing theme. Contributions, at appointed places, will pour in; high-spirited young men will put on arms, and set sail for the scene of conflict. A wave of enthusiasm will pass backward, from

the coast, into the country, ride over the Alleghanies, and move on, till it reaches the extreme boundary of population. One deep, thrilling sympathy pervades the whole land. Thus, a movement of intellect, or emotion, any where, easily becomes a movement every where. He that rises to make a speech, makes it to the whole civilized portion of mankind, now living, or hereafter to live, on the earth. All could not hear the orator's voice, but the thoughts and heart-thrills of those who did hear it, are communicated, received, transmitted, outspread, till they reach all who are sufficiently emerged from barbarism to appreciate them. He who writes a book, writes it, not for one age and one nation; he writes it for the family of man. Every record of history, every line of poetry, every doctrine of philosophy, every passage of oratory, every announcement of religion, is the beginning of a series of influences, to be limited only by the boundary of created being. The universe seems like one vast whispering-gallery, to carry all the utterances of mind throughout its immensity.

A literature of such a description as that which has been here commended, rich, healthful, elevated, diffusive, powerful, should have no rival, for a moment, in the hearts of our scholars and men of intelligence. Be it so, that our superficial, popular literature comes with many earnest pretensions to superiority of style, imagery and description; with many warm professions of desire to encourage innocence and virtue; its effect, intellectually, we do still insist, is, like that of the hydrocephalus, an enlargement of the head, but a paralysis of the intellectual organ; and, morally, like that of the consumption, hallucination and confidence, but a sure wasting of the vital organ. Through the influence of the soundly educated portion of the community, the whole should be repudiated and removed; our schools and colleges, readingrooms and families, be thoroughly cleansed out; and then, pure and instructive works be invited forward, to pour their tide of truth and eloquence into all these places of literary reading, taste and influence. We invoke scholars, professional

men, men of literary leisure, literary writers, book publishers -all the good character and all the active talent of the country we invoke, in behalf of this great and important reformation in our popular literature.

Such a literary regeneration would constitute an era of mind-the way-mark of an age. It would be a high honour and a great glory. Our country ought to earn this honour. Most nobly would this glory befit her. That will be a proud day for us, when, not armies and navies, territory and wealth, but the writings of the great and pure, shall be the chief depositories of our power, and the most valuable materials of our greatness.

ARTICLE VI.

RELIGIOUS VIEWS AND HISTORY OF THE MAGI.

By Rev. S. P. Hildreth, Jr., Walnut Hills, Ohio.

An interesting scene in the life of Christ is described by Matthew, which has not been noticed by the other evangelists. He begins the second chapter of his Gospel with the words, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." Who were these Wise Men? Nothing is said of them again in the Bible. To one who has not investigated their history, an air of mysterious romance is thrown over their visit, which causes them to seem almost like beings of another race. They emerge from obscurity, offer their adoration, present their rich gifts to the infant Saviour, and then vanish again like the angels in the night scene on the plains of Bethlehem. Some have supposed them to have been learned men, coming from a distant part of Palestine.